Why is it Important for Parents to Read to Their Kids?

All the research shows that reading aloud to children is the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills required for eventual success in school, reading and life.

In a study conducted of kindergartners, those who were read to at least three times a week as they entered kindergarten were almost twice as likely to score in the top 25 percent of literacy tests than children who were read to less than three times a week. National Institute for Literacy (2006).

All the data and scientific research prove that reading aloud to children stimulates their brain and builds critical neurological pathways that are supremely important to language acquisition and cognition skills. That may sound all fancy-schmancy but what we are really talking about is opening the door to future success in both school and in life.

But this isn’t supposed to be some droll, arduous task. Reading to your kids is FUN! Fun for you, fun for them. Sure, they get tons of benefits. They feel loved, nurtured, respected, protected and so on. But on the flip side, what parent doesn’t feel like they are working triple time hard these days. Our lives sometimes feel like non-stop assaults, to-do lists that no matter how much you to-do, it never gets to-done.

Well, reading to your kids is that stop and smell the roses moment all parents want and deserve to have. It’s not a “one day when we have all this money and a large house type of thing”… your kids are growing up now and they don’t really care much about the size of their house or the model of car that you drive. What they want is you. 100% you. And when you make it a nightly ritual to share a book with your kid, it’s a gift that lasts both them and you for the rest of your lives.

It’s an honor for me to write books that parents can use to share laughs, love, joy and goofiness. Because in that goofiness, there’s magic.